Hearing that there was a shooting at a factory in Hesston, Kansas, I wondered if this shooting had anything to do with the mass displacement of American workers from factory jobs. It seems like it does. I noticed that surving employees interviewed had Spanish names:

Factory employee Martin Espinoza described how the gunman, a colleague who he said usually had a calm demeanour, attempted to shoot him.

I found that in Hesston, KS, a small two-factory town, the Hispanic population had nearly doubled between the 2000 and 2010 censuses. Based on that, I was kind of expecting a Mexican gunman, but it’s not, as you’ll see.

I also found this:

UPDATE 7:16PM: An employee who witnessed the shooting told local media that she did not recognize the shooter. She described him as “dark complexioned and wearing a muscle shirt”

Memento Mori: I got turned down as a maintenance supervisor at a Excel plant in Nebraska, because I wasn’t fluent in Spanish or Vietnamese….

And finally, the Washington Times has a report that gunman was black:

The gunman, identified by several Wichita news outlets as Cedric Ford, was a disgruntled worker who recently had been fired from Excel Industries in Hesston, a small town in Harvey County.

T. Walton, the Harvey County sheriff, told Wichita TV station KAKE that “four to seven” people were dead, including the gunman, and 20 to 30 were injured.

“It was a black male with an AK-47 who was an employee, or used to be,” one woman told KAKE reporter Monica Castro just outside Excel, a company that makes Big Dog and Hustler mowing equipment. Eyewitness from inside the factory confirmed her account.

Ford fits that description and the Facebook page of a Cedric Ford identifies him as an Excel worker and shows photos and videos of Ford wielding and using multiple firearms. He had a criminal record in both Kansas and his native Florida, according to KWCH, the CBS affiliate in Wichita.

The woman told KAKE that her husband is a supervisor at Excel and she had other friends at the plant, one of whom she said had been shot and critically injured. She said she got her information from her husband inside the plant during a company head count for survivors.

The family member told KAKE that the gunman shot an elderly woman in the parking lot before going inside and attacking employees and security. Sheriff Walton confirmed that basic account and said that woman survived.

According to Florida court documents, he was charged with multiple crimes in his history, including burglary, grand theft, fleeing and eluding and other charges dating back to 1996. Ford was also booked in Sedgwick County in 2008. Eyewitness News has not confirmed the charges in the Sedgwick County arrest.

According to Ford’s Facebook page, he was a painter at Excel Industries.

Several photos on his Facebook page show him holding at least two guns. One is a handgun, the other is a semi-automatic.

We know that Ford had criminal history out of Broward and Miramar counties in Florida from 1997-2000.